


Meeting On the Corner of Excitement and Chance

by barrelrider



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Gen, No this isn't Doctor Who, Or maybe Phoneman or something, Paperman, more like, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-18
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-29 18:17:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/690003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barrelrider/pseuds/barrelrider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes has a routine: take the Jubilee line train from Baker Street Station to Stratford Station and head to New Scotland Yard. Day in and day out, he repeats the routine and pays little mind to the masses of stories walking by him on two legs - until he meets the soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Excitement

The tube station was not what Sherlock would call _exciting_.

It was the same thing every day: deductions on two legs walking by him, busy with their lives, oblivious that their lifelines were drawn out like maps for him to read. Their stories varied in some way or the other - life, after all, was a relative thing - but nothing _happened_. Nothing made his day other than the thought that perhaps, father time be kind, he could make it to New Scotland Yard before Lestrade went on his lunch break to consume his slapdash sandwich.

He'd learned long ago that informing anyone about what dull lives they tended to risk a punch to the face, and arriving at the Yard with a black eye made it less likely that the officers would work with him. Going to the crime scenes on his own wasn't allowed. It was one of those law things that he not-so-infrequently broke. But on the days when news of exciting crime escaped his ears, he headed to the Yard first to collaborate with, complain to, and insult his favourite DI (who was also the least irritating officer there). And there he was again, as per usual, at the Baker Street tube station, stoic and silent, his light blue hues closed.

Sherlock Holmes was doing what Sherlock Holmes did best: he was _thinking_. Thinking about how the woman walking behind him was looking forward to dropping her son off at daycare so she could get smashed with her coworkers during happy hour. Thinking of the man blabbering on his mobile and how any passing person with half a brain cell could deduce his financial trouble in the midst of a duel divorce and child custody battle, one he was doomed to lose, judging by the way he screamed abuse at his ex-wife. Thinking on the clicking footsteps all around him, equal parts white noise and the patter of bombs and gunfire in his ears; stories passing by, people going about their day-to-day, unexciting lives.

Thinking about the doctor now standing beside him.

No one stood next to him. No one stood next to anyone in the tube station. That was the benefit of traveling the London Underground: like everyone else, he wasn't sociable, didn't want to chat about the day or how the kids are, and so avoiding everyone was simple because everyone was avoiding him, too. Everyone was avoiding everyone. (He would never admit that it was refreshing to be avoided along with a flock, instead of being the black sheep the flock avoided as a whole.) Everyone, it would seem, except for the doctor.

He opened an eye, almost expecting a lab coat and a clipboard. He did see what he could tell was an I.D. for some surgery of sorts being slipped into the left pocket of the man's coat. The man himself was not only a doctor, but a soldier, by the look of him. Military hair cut, trained stance, tan on the hands and face but not from recreational laying. Army doctor, then. Sherlock almost wanted to ask whether his deployment and subsequent injury and ticket home occurred under the slaying sun of Afghanistan or Iraq, but Sherlock didn't fancy a punch that day. Nor did he fancy conversation, which is what the other man seemed to secretly crave, given his closeness and general aura of annoying approachability.

He closed his eyes again and wondered when the last time he wanted to ask someone about their life had been. The thought made his eye reopen for one more glance. Curiosity killed the cat and Sherlock was the one who looked into its motives.

The ex-army doctor looked tired, both physically and emotionally. His mostly unreadable expression could have been mistaken for boredom or neutrality, but Sherlock could see just with his one eye that the other man's held a sort of emptiness to them, as if life was unfulfilling for him. How disappointing it must be, the detective thought, to feel as if one's very being was not being being utilised to its full potential, as if every day was meaningless, a routine from which they could not break, like a cell with steel bars.

Sherlock caught the man's eye and looked towards the tracks. _Disappointing_. Yes, he could understand that.

From the corner of his eye he saw the man's hand swivel on the cane he held. He wasn't really leaning on his cane, either. He was more holding it as if it were merely something to hold on to, like he had forgotten it. Psychosomatic, then. Interesting.

The man cleared his throat. In his mind's wandering, Sherlock had turned his head and had been watching his hand and cane with an insulting lack of discretion. He swiftly looked off again, not even offering one of his fake smiles. He didn't have the mind to think of using one, not when so many questions were arising about the silent soldier next to him. How was he injured? Was he aware that he had a psychosomatic limp? Did he have a therapist for what he surely thought was PTSD? (Of _course_ he has a therapist, you idiot, don't be absurd.) Did he have anyone waiting for him at the end of the day, wherever it was he lived? Afghanistan or Iraq?

In his thoughts about the stranger he was reading, Sherlock failed to notice that his phone was beeping threateningly. It wasn't until he took it out to check the time that he noticed it was dead. He muttered a curse under his breath and checked his watch. Five minutes late. Grumbling to himself, he glanced about him, wondering how it was he could call Lestrade to inform him that not only would he be tardy (and to not start on his tuna sandwich and spend twenty minutes digesting) but that his  phone was dead. There was a queue for the underground phone that Sherlock didn't want to risk jumping into and missing his train for, and he certainly couldn't write a letter, make an paper aeroplane, and send it on the wind.

The man next to him cleared his throat again. Sherlock sighed, now bothered by his presence, and turned his head to rip him a new one and insult him until he went away.

A phone lay offered in the outstretched left palm of the other man's reach. The doctor stared at the detective, still stone-faced and silent. The rude deductions and insults died in Sherlock's throat. He licked his lips and looked at the other man with some uncertainty. In that moment their eyes locked, and the steeled expression on the doctor's face melted. For a flicker in time, his eyes opened further with a blink; Sherlock could see they were a dark, dark blue, and they were inquisitive and kind, even if their wearer held himself with an unnameable sadness. If he were a romantic, Sherlock would say he could get lost in those eyes forever. But he wasn't a romantic, and certainly didn't want to stall him any longer, so he took his phone with a nod and a thin-lipped smile. Before he looked away, he saw the man's hopeful (was it hopeful?) visage return to its careful facade, though he did smile weakly as he ducked his head down to stare at the tile beneath his feet.

Sherlock took time to examine the beat-up, engraved phone of an alcoholic named Harry Watson and somehow doubted the name belonged to the soldier. He didn't carry himself as an alcoholic, nor was he wearing a wedding ring or showed any form of relationship to a "Clara." The background wasn't even a woman. It was a default, dull wallpaper. He considered sniffing at it, but got to work dialing Lestrade instead.

The conversation was brief on Sherlock's end and lengthy on Lestrade's. It left Sherlock wishing he would shut _up_ already and let him talk. But, when he did talk, it was in the distracted way of someone whose attention was almost entirely elsewhere. That was strange for Sherlock, and it only prompted more questions; questions he didn't want to answer because he had questions of his own for the phone's owner, and he could feel his lingering body warmth on the mobile he'd been fiddling with some ten or so minutes earlier, and he still wanted to know just where the nameless army doctor had been stationed.

As the voice of the DI came to a stop and the call ended, however, that nameless man was nowhere to be found. Sherlock glanced around him taking in his suddenly moving and chaotic surroundings. A tube had come - not his. Through the hoard of people boarding the Metropolitan Line, he couldn't find the man. It wasn't until he glanced at the windows, which slowly began to creak away as the train headed towards Finchley Road and away from him, that he saw his soldier idly reading a paper, clearly too caught up with his own thoughts to remember that he'd given his phone to the stranger on the platform.

Sherlock considered waving or chasing the train, but he knew it would be futile and it would only serve to be idiotically Hollywood of him. He sagged his shoulders, sighing shortly as the man pulled away from him and went down the line, and some ways from where Sherlock himself was headed. With him went all his deductions and speculated answers, leaving the detective with his questions. Just as the tube turned out of reach through a darkened tunnel, Sherlock, whose gaze never left the doctor's window, met with dark blue, and the man who had given him unexpected company and much, much more offered him the slimmest of smiles, sincere and warm; and then he was gone.

Left standing alone in a crowd, Sherlock shifted on his feet. He had nothing to do now and hardly cared to deduce anyone else, so the detective opened the phone and searched its innards for any scraps of information he could find on the mystery that had left him on the Metro line. There were no photos, no voice messages, and few inbox/sent texts. The ones that were stored away all addressed a man named John, sent by people named Mike M., Sarah, Harry, and Bill, 4 of the 7 people in the phone (the others were Da, Ella office, and Mum). There were offers to go to a pub, a note about schedules, and something about dinner. The schedule shift was okay'd by the doctor, but the plans were all declined. So his soldier lived a lonely life, then. Otherwise, Sherlock did not find much to go on, as far as who the man was, nor did he know where he was going or how to find him again, other than perhaps calling one of the few people in his phone book.

But, that was the easy way, wasn't it? And what Sherlock Holmes did second-best was never the easy way, and what he did second-best was finding the truth.

So, he pocketed the mobile, watched as the Jubilee line came to take him away to Stratford Underground to catch a cab to Scotland Yard to start his day, the same as every other, it seemed, perhaps with the exception (read: hope) of a new crime to look forward to. As he stepped onto the tube and took his usual seat, he fiddled with the mobile in his greatcoat pocket, the phone of an army doctor named John, which was the only thing new about his day.

The train began to move, saying him gently to and fro, and Sherlock continued to wonder: Afghanistan or Iraq. A smirk came to his face as he stroked the phone's surface. He would find out.

And _that_ was exciting, indeed.


	2. Chance

Fourth homicide in a week. Strangulation with stranded sling wire rope in a park off Ealing Road. Suspects: restaurant or shoppe owners, anyone with transportable goods.

Several Hindu eateries in the area were their primary interview points, but Sherlock hardly listened as they entered each establishment, sat workers down and tried to pry information about the case out of them. He distracted himself with the cutlery or with the cars that passed by on the busily-trafficked street. All the while, his fingers smoothed over the marks and mars on the case of the phone - John's phone, John the soldier's phone, John the doctor's phone.

If only it could bring him back to the man.

He had been fine upon coming to the Yard. He'd even managed to coerce Lestrade into choking down his food twice as fast as he normally would. The case had sounded promising. There was nothing like picking on shoppers for tidbits of information.

But they were soon dulled to grey when the phone in his pocket vibrated, and as soon as Sherlock had reached for it, he remembered the wayward soldier. The woman named Ella had texted confirming their appointment for that day - Sherlock assumed she was either his doctor, his dentist, or his therapist - and he hadn't replied, mainly because Lestrade had tugged him along to their next interview before he could.

And so, staring out the glass of some office he didn't care to deduce, he watched the cars below and the comings and goings of people entering and leaving what appeared to be a small medical facility across the way. He sniffed at them, all dots on the great map of the world, and none of them, not one single person, could be the soldier.

Well. Maybe one of them could be. But he knew the probability and didn't want to think about it.

A ray of sunshine peeked through the clouds and blinded him for a moment. As if it were the physical embodiment of fate shining upon him, his narrowed-eyed squint and subsequent gaze led him to spotting a small office window, wherein a man in a white lab coat seated himself with what appeared to be a clipboard in his hand. A doctor with a patient, surely. Sherlock began to look away once the sunlight passed him by to blind someone on the roadway below.

His right hand stroked the phone in his pocket. A thought struck him, then. A doctor with a patient... a  _doctor_.

He looked back, face practically smushed against the glass, and exhaled through his nose as the face of the soldier on the platform stood out from across the street. Sherlock's heart thudded hard in his chest. There he was, just a street away - not even that - where Sherlock could see his comings and goings and, if he were truly bold enough, could head down the floors of the building he was in, dart through the traffic, and find him again, and ask him all the things he was insanely curious about for reasons he truly could not explain.

Lestrade's voice behind him beckoned him. He sighed, the reflection in the mirror showing his eyeroll. He couldn't well sneak off on a case, not so long as it was as interesting as the Yard was incompetent. He stepped away from the pane, still watching the doctor as he worked.

He could be in two places at once, couldn't he?

A quick inquiry with one of the workers ended with Sherlock flipping through a phone book of businesses in the area. He quickly found the surgery across the street and held the phone to his ear as he half-heartedly listened to Lestrade speak slow English to an Indian woman who clearly knew the language just as well as he. The detective muttered a quiet request into the phone, knowing it was a long-shot to request the office number  of a man whose name he only knew as "John." His hunch proved correct as he was directed to a Mr. John Finnegan, MD., and one John O'Reiley, LPC.

Five minutes and two very short phone calls later, Sherlock was given the number of John Watson, MD., and Sherlock grinned as his fingers danced over the engraving of the (previous) mobile owner's last name.  He glanced from the window back to the interview. The woman was yelling at Lestrade about accusations and something about ruining her business. She was clearly innocent, as were her workers, but he needed to stay where he was, if only for a moment more, so he stayed quiet as he waited to hear the soldier's voice at last.

The line rang, and rang, and rang, and no one answered. He tried again seconds later and peeked down into the man's office, noting that he could no longer see the doctor. Still, no one replied. Sherlock hissed with irritation and snapped the phone shut. He began to pace, wondering madly where he had gone wrong with his deductions and whether or not his mind was playing tricks on him. (Little did he know that John Watson stood on the balcony of the surgery, taking a ten minute break as he wondered whether or not he should call Ella to confirm the appointment he hardly wanted to go to.)

Realising the futility of the interview themselves, the Yarders led Sherlock up and down Ealing Road to further the investigation, and every time they passed by or were remotely close to the surgery, Sherlock would look up to the third floor and wish that the doctor would come back into view - or, rather, that he could bloody  _see_  his view. Being on ground level was such a disadvantage. It was a wonder he managed to stomach traveling underground almost exclusively.

Yet, even that marvel paled to what was about to transpire; something neither Sherlock nor John could have ever prepared for, even as they kept thinking, at different intervals, about the strange man who had been standing beside them on the Baker Street tube station platform.

Lestrade was muttering with the other officers as Sherlock watched a boy pass with a dark blue balloon. He saw the child almost let the balloon go, where it would have drifted into the sky until the pressure (or an aeroplane/vagrant bird) caused it to burst, but the boy managed to grab it just as it almost slipped too far. He pocketed his hands and sighed mutely, unbelieving that he was jealous of a boy and his balloon because of some romanicised metaphor it had for himself and the soldier he'd let slip away.

A chance glance across the street almost made Sherlock fall over from surprise as he witnessed the doctor, cane in hand and white coat abandoned, hobbling down Ealing Road. It took only a few seconds to add two and two together: he was heading to his appointment with that Ella woman. It took half a second for Sherlock to face his decisions of calling Ella and demanding to know where she worked; staying with the Yarders, loyal to his duty and his obvious importance in their gaggle of idiocy; and sodding everything and taking off in a mad sprint after the man to give him back his phone, sit him down for a cuppa, and asking everything he wanted to know about him.

It took Sherlock a good six seconds to realise that his hand had grabbed the phone that wasn't his and that he was dialing a number, his decision apparently long-since mace.

Mycroft had given him a lengthy list of numbers for phone booths and boxes, pay phones, and other telephone lines strewn about London for the public's paying use. He'd memorised about half of the numbers, and of them had used two, up to the point. How odd; just days earlier he had been considering deleting the list to make room for information about the solar system.

As he typed in the number for an Ealing Road payphone, he decided that stars were over-rated.

Ignoring Lestrade's irate calls of his name, Sherlock watched the payphone ring near the doctor as he passed it. He seemed to look back, look around, then carried on, unbothered. Sherlock desperately punched in the next one as the man began to slip out of view. A woman picked up the line, to which Sherlock growled angrily and shut the call down with a click.

At long last, he turned around to a sharp call of his name - Lestrade demanding him to either help out or go home. Sherlock watched him and the other officers in total, unreadable silence. For the first time in his life he didn't know what to do: stay where his feet were grounded and hope for something new, or go on a wild goose chase after positive- and certain excitement.

In his mind's eye, he replayed the way the doctor had looked at him (head cocked to the side slightly, eyes dancing with curiosity and generosity). Just like him, for a fleeting moment, the doctor had found something, someone, new; entirely unexpected, but anything but unwelcomed. The man had almost been _wanting_ him to say something. Sherlock knew he should have.

He knew it just as he knew he couldn't let the doctor get away.

Tearing down the walkway, Sherlock called yet another phone booth as he spotted the doctor pass it. This time, the man paused, seemed to approach the booth, then shook his head and hurried along. The detective remained undaunted. He called another number and paused to catch his breath and observe the reaction of the man, the opportunity, he couldn't let himself lose.

The soldier seemed to have been expecting the ringing, then. He walked around the booth, first, then glanced about to make sure no one else was going for it. As he stepped inside, he leaned his cane on the glass and put his hand on the phone. From down the road, Sherlock licked his lips in anticipation. And then...

His hand dropped to his coat, suddenly, and then to his trouser pockets, and the doctor looked around his feet in confusion. Sherlock watched as he abruptly tore from the booth, now running down High Road. It wasn't a difficult deduction to make that the man had realised his phoneless state, but Sherlock was less focused on that and more tuned into the fact that the soldier was running cane-free. The wood remained leaned up on the glass inside the booth. Sherlock grinned as he passed it in running.

Park Lane came next, with John on the left walkway and Sherlock on the right, calling phone line and booth; phone box and payphone. They all seemed to ring off the hook after the doctor, who didn't stop to answer any of the calls but had taken note. Sherlock swore he saw the hints of a grin on the other man's face. Was he thanking God that the phones were reminding him that he'd forgotten his? Was he thinking of him? Did he know he'd left his cane back blocks away? Where had he gone: Afghanistan, or Iraq?

A car squealed to a stop to Sherlock's right, and the detective reluctantly backed himself onto the walkway to let traffic flow. He wanted to follow the man, but running through traffic to do so was an extension he didn't want to use. After all, he'd need energy to catch him as he headed back to Baker Street. 

The phones continued to ring, unanswered, beckoning both the doctor and the detective who tailed him towards Wembley Park Station (Sherlock deduced that that had been the man's final, tube-bound destination hours ago). Sherlock's mind swam with the questions he'd had buzzing through his head, and all the potential answers began to storm in his mind once more. Adrenaline pumped through his body, surging him onwards, encouraged by the promise of something and someone new. So confident and excited was he that he hadn't had one single thought that it could end, that the soldier could find him repulsive and alien and leave him just as every other idiot on the planet seemed to. Not with the look of kindness in his dark blue eyes. Not with the little smile he'd offered at the very last second. Not with the spark that had burst between them.

Breathless and rather sore from cranking phone numbers of every phone he'd passed on the street, Sherlock paused in his steps as the Wembley Park station peeked beyond the slope he had only just ascended. John was sprinting now, determined to catch the Metropolitan line which Sherlock knew from the timeclock would be there in two minutes. The trip to Baker Street would be fifteen; the trip down the road to the station would be four. The detective gritted his teeth, knowing with dread that he would very likely miss the train himself and would have to wait for the next or beg a cab to take him, and even then he could miss John and it would all be for naught, and he would once more be left with two mobiles, one dead and one which wasn't even his, and a million unanswered questions.

Like a balloon slipping out of his grasp.

Sherlock's hand on the mobile tightened. He inhaled slowly, then gazed southeast. The Jubilee line would be at the Neasden station soon - give or take seven minutes - and it was a mile away. Better odds than the Metro. He began to sprint like a madman through alleys and on roofs as he raced to beat the clock. He had to know and had to give John back his bloody phone and had to take the chance he was given. He was sick of routine and only flickers of new information and experiences. He was tired of disappointment. He remembered that John looked the same way, too. No; he couldn't lose this, not until he knew, not until he  _tried_. In a blurred mix of running, staring at his watch, and thinking over time tables for tubes, Sherlock caught a cab halfway to Neasden, all but screamed at him to get to the station as soon as he could, and raced down the platform, scrambling into the Jubilee line at the last minute and collapsing in a chair that wasn't his usual, next to a boy with a dark blue balloon. 

The sounds of the train filled his ears as Sherlock sat, eyes closed, doing what Sherlock did best: thinking. Thinking of the soldier and why he felt so drawn to him. Thinking that with any luck he would be able to figure that out. Thinking of how it was like looking in a shattered mirror at his own reflection: the two of them, longing for excitement and fulfilled potential than never came, like two missing pieces. Thinking of his tanned hands, and the cane he left behind, and the way he'd smiled ever so slightly. Thinking of the bets he placed with himself on whether the man had been in Kabul or Baghdad. Thinking, for the first time, that maybe, just maybe, someone wouldn't run from him.

The doors slid open, the creaking whining in his ears. His eyes settled on the seat across from him, near the door. The boy and his balloon were gone. He began to wonder where they'd gone, but remembered that he had better things to wonder, especially when he saw, standing alone on the platform, a recently-arrived ex-army doctor looking utterly disappointed. His face was schooled blank just at it had been when Sherlock first caught sight of him. He was staring back at the spot he'd been before, surely waiting to leave back to Wembley where he'd meet Ella, apologise for being late because he didn't have a phone, and wonder how he would possibly get it back. Maybe he would wonder about Sherlock. Hopefully, he would wonder about Sherlock, in that alternative universe, if Sherlock decided to remain where he was, seated and staring, facing the gap between them, wondering if he was daring enough to get up and go over and try.

It was an easy decision to make.

The payphone began to ring a few seconds later, and the forlorn doctor immediately perked up as if someone had called his name. Sherlock supposed, in a way, someone had - _him_. He watched with a light-hearted smirk as the man whirled about and faced him, excitement etched in his eyes. He was delighted to see the understanding in his warm and friendly gaze. With a click, Sherlock ended the call, and like magic the payphone stopped ringing. The four or five people who had been waiting to use it gawked at the phenomenon, but neither Sherlock nor John cared as they approached one another, quietly reclaiming the spot on the platform they had frequented just hours ago.

Companionable silence settled between them. It wasn't the same as before - two men off to their lives who happened to be standing next to one another, one staring at the other. It was easy, and natural, and was certainly not the antisocial atmosphere of the London Underground choking them both. It was silence spawned from the spark that returned between them, and as Sherlock outstretched his hand, he saw the doctor's familiar smile return, full-fledged, as their hands touched in greeting and thanks.

Sherlock didn't need to ask if John had come back in part because of some naive, romantic hope of seeing him again. It would have sounded pretentious of him, anyway, and he didn't want to be smacked because of it. Besides, he knew the answer, if his own motives meant anything; if the softness in the soldier's eyes meant anything.

But, there were things Sherlock _didn't_ know, things he'd raced across London to find out, things he could finally understand. And so, with his hand shaking the soldier's, he offered a smile in return and asked the question which would jumpstart both their lives, "Afghanistan or Iraq?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise for any conflicting train times, you Londoners. This American exhausted herself looking up the LU trains and their routes. /collapses
> 
> Obviously there has been change from the original Paperman story, but the heart as I've interpreted it remains mostly true. This work was inspired by this fanart by the talented speakfriendandenter (http://speakfriendandenter.tumblr.com/post/43291350141/sherlock-paperman-has-this-been-done). It turned out a bit longer than I'd have liked, and the pacing is unusual for me, but writing dialogue-less stories is new, too. Hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
